On the 20th of June Netflix released their new animated film KPop Demon Hunters with massive success, already climbing Top 10 Movies and the Global charts on Spotify for its soundtrack within a week of its release. Reviews online rave about its animation and stunning visuals alongside comedic and engaging characters.
What’s the hype all about? Where can you watch it? And where does the inspiration of the movie come from?
What is KPop Demon Hunters about?
“When K-pop superstars Rumi, Mira and Zoey aren’t selling out stadiums, they’re using their secret powers to protect their fans from supernatural threats.” Is the description provided by Netflix in the summary, but to go more in depth the three girls are K-pop idols in the group HUNTR/X who work undercover as hunters to protect the population from demons.
Not much is known about the girls’ backgrounds and how they came to be hunters aside from Rumi being the daughter of one of the previous hunters.
A rival boy group made up of demons, the Saja Boys, appears and the girls must stop them from stealing the souls of the people and seal off the demon world permanently. But Rumi has a secret she is hiding from her group, that she is part demon too.
The only way to watch it is through Netflix.
Who is the cast?
There are quite a few well-known names in the voice cast, though there are separate voice actors for most of the characters in the songs. The name in parentheses will be the singing voice actor.
- Arden Cho (and EJAE) as Rumi
- Rumi Oak as young Rumi
- Yu Ji-young (and Rei Ami) as Zoey
- May Hong (and Audrey Nuna) as Mira
- Ahn Hyo-Seop (and Andrew Choi) as Jinu Saja
- Cho SungWon (and Neckwav) as Abby Saja
- Joel Kim Booster (and samUIL Lee) as Romance Saja
- Danny Chung as Baby Saja
- Kevin Woo as Mystery Saja
- Ken Jeong as Bobby, HUNTR/X’s manager
- Lee Byung-hun as Gwi-ma
- Kim Yunjin (and Lea Salonga) as Celine, Rumi’s mentor
- Liza Koshy as the Host
There are also real-life K-pop idols and Korean actors that inspired the characters. The girl group was inspired by ITZY, BLACKPINK, and TWICE.
The Saja Boys were inspired by the groups TXT, BTS, Stray Kids, Ateez, BigBang, and Monsta X, according to the director. With Jinu, the leader of Saja Boys, being specifically inspired by Cha Eun-woo and Nam Joo-hyuk.
Fans have attempted to place who inspired the looks of the other Saja Boys.
So far they’ve theorized Abby being San from ATEEZ, and Wonho and Shownu from Monsta X. Romance resembles TXT’s Yeonjun, Stray Kids’ Felix, ATEEZ’s Seonghwa. And Baby resembles BTS’s Suga and Jimin. Mystery is said to be based off of anime tropes, but nonetheless fans have placed him with Daesung from BIGBANG and OnlyOneOf’s Junji.
The soundtrack
With THEBLACKLABEL associated with YG Entertainment behind the album it was certain that they would produce only bangers with notable songwriters and vocal producers like Jenna Andrews and Stephen Kirk (“Butter” and “Dynamite” by BTS), Lindgren (“Crown” by TXT and “Boy with Luv” by BTS) and more.
The KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack has been what lured many fans to the movie in the first place. Viral clips online showcase the team’s incredible ability to produce K-pop music and what has resulted in most of the tracks on the album ranking in the Top 50: Global charts and other tracks not trailing too far behind on the Top 100 so far.
The most popular tracks as of now are by far “Golden” and “Soda Pop” the former being an upbeat and inspirational pop song and the latter a very classic and catchy bubblegum pop.
My personal recommendation is “Your Idol” which introduces a choir in a very unique and intriguing way. Although every song deserves a listen because they are all great.
TWICE who was part of the inspiration for the girls also provides a couple of songs for the album and is featured in the credits; their own version of “TAKEDOWN” sung with Jeonghyeon, Jihyo, and Chaeyoung.
And K-drama fans will recognize “Love, Maybe” by MeloMance in the movie too from Business Proposal.
Why you should watch it
It was created by Sony Pictures Animation which also produced Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse and Across the Spiderverse which is already enough of an incentive to watch it.
But if that isn’t enough then the wonderful plot, cast, and soundtrack is definitely enough to tempt anyone. It’s an action-packed film with a dollop of romance and a message about being truthful to yourself and your friends, sticking together through thick and thin no matter what.
And for anyone that is interested in Korean culture, it is full of Korean foods, locations, and mythology. Any K-pop or K-drama fans don’t want to miss this film, and even for those who don’t know anything about Korean culture or mainstream media it’s still a highly enjoyable watch that doesn’t require any previous knowledge.
It also helps that the characters are good looking and wear amazing costumes. Because the girls coordinate outfits wonderfully, and the Saja Boys aren’t too shabby either.
Have fun with similar characters on Typecast
With the Text-to-Speech tool on Typecast.ai you can play around with the voices that resemble the HUNTR/X and maybe create videos with the Video Editor tool.
For Mira I suggest using Insun though she might lack a bit of that vocal fry that makes Mira distinctive. For Rumi there are a few more options like Athena, Riley, and Hailey, but there may be other voices that suit her more if you look around.
Zoey has a very cute voice and there are many more options, but some to get you started are Dasom, Liz, Catherine, or Maddie.
Typecast even has hundreds of Korean voices if you want to dive deeper into the KPop hype.
For those who want to jump into the world of AI voices you can check out our guide on text-to-speech voices and characters here!
